Los Alamos National Lab Creates Hydrogen Research Institute

Keep in mind that these people live on grants and/or projects. When neither are available, they discover the joys of standing in the unemployment line.

who will George pick a fight with if they are successful, and there is no longer a dependence on oil?
[and realizing that, where will the 'grant money' come from?]

Maybe in Canada, grants are based on necessity. In the US? This is supposed to be a serious discussion, ya know?

serious; oops sorry, i thought it was supposed to be 'parallel'!

Just read an article on "alternative fuels" and their practicality in last month's Scientific American. Seems that ways of generating the hydrogen that promises the perfect engine that creates only water as a "waste" material is, well...problematic. Sure, given the hydrogen that works in fuel cells the final energy extraction is a dream come true. But how do we obtain this ubiquitous element that essentially is non-existent on this planet in the elemental form needed without the synthetic efforts of man? It is enough to note that at this point in time generating the universe's simplest element, here on earth, requires large energy expenditure. The hydrogen on earth is already spent; to use it we must re-invest energy to convert it back to its elemental form for it to be a viable fuel. This requires the use of other sources of energy. Electricity is one but that generated by sunlight (the only outside source in what is mostly a relatively a closed system regarding our energy use) is fairly inefficient. The other sources beg the question of: why not just use them and eliminate the middleman? The search for a better alternative fuel is almost pie in the sky. The best fuel is still petrol and the most realistic efforts are focused upon the increased efficiency in its use. The Electric/Gas hybrid is a real success story but not without the subsidies which are necessary to defray cost to the end user(surely this is one of the benefits of big government). Sans the goal of "cleaner fuels", even the hybrid is irrelevant. The beauty of the hybrid is in the engineering involved that tends to parsimoniously use that energy with a kind of "thinking/knowing/deciding" computerized power plant and not the electricity sometimes employed (The electricity's source, after all, is...Gas).

It doesn't take long to see that each time one converts one type of energy into another a measure of efficiency is lost. This is why it cost more to air condition (cool) a house then it does to heat it.

On the whole, fuel cells are useful in certain situations that will not tolerate the "drawbacks" of such energy extracting devices as internal combustion gasoline engines (Space capsules and such). But they will not supply the bulk of the energy that we presently require.

Real world efforts at energy extraction should be concentrated on increasing efficiency of existing fossil fuels. This includes more efficient engine use-- that concept includes the use of less energy to accomplish the same goals. At some point we may decide that it is not necessary to use 4500lb trucks with big block V-8's just to ride back and forth to work unless, of course, our work requires us to tow a small back-hoe to our place of business.

JM

The institute has computer security holes.......

As James typed, the road to hydrogen is difficult, but we should not give up. Modest amounts of hydrogen can be produced at about double the cost of petroleum. Likely we can narrow that gap. Reducing our dependence on foreign oil could save the lives of millions of USA tax payers by avoiding World War 3.
Only a few alternative energy ideas look as attractive as hydrogen, and none appear viable very large scale, so we may need to replace fossil fuels with the combined effort of 100 alternatives. Neil